How Halloween Crossed the Globe

It’s 5am on Halloween day. The sun’s up somewhere behind all that cloud, the road outside is wet and the distant rumblings might mean the rain is out over the Bay – or that more is approaching. According to BOM, it’s a bit of both.

It hasn’t been a good night. In a way. You see, I’m very much a morning person. Back when I was a computer programmer (software engineer sounds so much… classier – but really you’re just cutting code) I was known to go to work at 3am because I’d worked out how to fix that bug and I couldn’t sleep anyway. So I was awake at 3am, the brain operating in overdrive.

The interesting question is why?

That’s because I’m revamping my author business. I’ve added a newsletter to my online presence but that’s not worth much if you don’t get subscribers. Who are the obvious subscribers? People who read my books. So that means updating all my books to add a link to my newsletter. I have 33 titles, mostly space opera with romance.

Once I open the document to add the link I think I might as well check a few things and often find myself reading the whole thing and fixing a word here or a (rare) typo there. And that’s what wakes me up at 3am. Could I improve the wording, get the message across better? Or I realise that bit doesn’t transition very well. Or I wonder if I’ve explained why he did that well enough? At the moment I’m having a wonderful time tweaking one of my favourite (and oldest) books, Morgan’s Choice, which stars my favourite book boyfriend admiral. I’ve learned a few things since I wrote that one.

Out in the world it’s Halloween day before the real fun starts this evening. Peter and I are of the ‘bah humbug’ disposition. I’ve bleated for years that Australia doesn’t ‘do’ Halloween, it’s American. It isn’t actually.

Halloween did not start with plastic pumpkins or kids in superhero outfits. It began in Europe, long before America was even a dream. The ancient Celts celebrated Samhain, marking the end of harvest and the start of winter when they believed the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest. They lit bonfires, wore disguises to confuse wandering spirits, and maybe shared a nip of something warming. When Christianity spread, the Church tried to tidy things up with All Saints’ Day on November 1, calling the night before “All Hallows’ Eve” — which, of course, got shortened to Halloween. Irish and Scottish immigrants took their traditions across the Atlantic in the 1800s, swapping turnip lanterns for pumpkins and solemn prayers for candy-fuelled fun. The Americans, being Americans, commercialised it spectacularly — and the rest of the world followed suit.

Including us. Australians have been a bit slow to jump on the Halloween broomstick, but we have well and truly caught up now. Twenty years ago, you might have seen one or two kids knocking on doors while bewildered neighbours muttered about “that American thing.” These days, it is pumpkins, costumes, and lolly raids galore. Supermarkets stock aisles of decorations by mid-October, front yards sprout skeletons, and kids plan their routes like seasoned strategists. We have even added our own twist — Halloween in shorts and thongs, with mozzie spray instead of misty autumn air. It is still not universal (some Aussies grumble that it is too commercial), but for many families, it is a fun excuse to dress up, share treats, and meet the neighbours — which, in our sprawling suburbs, is no bad thing. I suppose.

None of the neighbourhood kids need bother knocking on our door.

To all of you who do ‘celebrate’, if you’re around my time zone I hope you had a great evening. For those of you behind the times, have a wonderful Halloween or Samhain.

And those rumblings in the sky? They’re still happening out in the Bay. The cloud here deposited a number of those big fat drops, as if deciding whether it could be bothered. It couldn’t. At least for a while. Then another cloud took over and we got some proper rain. For ten minutes. Oh well.

See you next week. And if you haven’t signed up for my newsletter, please think about it. You get a free book in exchange for your email address.

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